Martin Russ shows you how to produce apparently complex music with the minimum of effort...

Algorithmic music generators have one problem: they scare most potential buyers with their imposing mathematical approach. Lots of numbers and too much concentration are hardly an encouragement to musical creativity. But there are other ways, and they often work on some of the simplest and cheapest sequencers around. In other words, this article aims to show you one of the ways that you can cheat!

This example relies on using the looping or repetition feature that many sequencers provide. You set the start and end points, and the sequencer then repeats the bars in between until you stop it. If your sequencer does not let you do this, then you can produce exactly the same results by copying the bars you want to repeat, and then pasting them into the track as many times as you want them to repeat.

The problem with being able to loop a track is that most people do exactly that — they record a verse/chorus set of bars and then set them to repeat, or even set a single bar of drum pattern to repeat ad infinitum throughout a song. The keywords in this article will be something like "Avoid the Obvious"; applying this, we quickly arrive at the conclusion that we will not loop the bars in the way the sequencer designers intended us to!

PHRASE LOOPING

For example, how about recording two 8-bar phrases, where the first has notes only in the first four bars, whilst the second has notes only in the last four bars. Looping both tracks will give the equivalent of a single 8-bar phrase. But suppose that you set the loop length of the second track to 12 bars instead of eight? What happens now is that the first eight bars play just as before, but then the first four bars repeat, then nothing plays for four bars, and then both phrases play at once for four bars!

We are getting complexity from very simple component parts, just by using different loop lengths. If we now add a further track, containing just a 4-bar phrase, but with 12 empty bars, we will get an even more sophisticated series of mixtures of the three phrases, and it will last for much longer without repeating than the 12 bars-worth of music phrase we have actually used. Recording a few sets of four bars, and then adding some empty bars is quick and easy in most sequencers, and so we have achieved our aim — music for almost no effort!

A little thought can extend the basic idea. Using even loop lengths gives rather boring and predictable results, whilst using odd and even numbers produces more interesting repeats, whilst using just prime numbers can give very long patterns which sound very impressive. The gaps are important: without the empty bars, you will have all the phrases playing at once, which eats up polyphony and lacks the dynamic variation that happens automatically if you leave gaps.

AS USED IN...

So what sort of music is this technique suitable for? Well, you're unlikely to get a top 10 single out of it, but then who knows... Seriously though, musak, new age, audio-visual backing tracks, baroque, techno and even some classical music are all eminently suitable. It can even be very effective when used with sound effects samples — just a few tracks of miscellaneous 'atmosphere' can quickly be set up to produce a pattern with a long, long repeat time, with no need for hours of editing and splicing...

The best way to plan out what is going to happen is with squared paper. If you are looking for a sequencer that is suited to this technique, then pay close attention to how it loops tracks. Some sequencers will only let you loop a complete sequence, so all the tracks are the same length, and here you will need to do the copy and paste operation mentioned earlier. A much better option is a sequencer which lets you set individual loop lengths for each track (E-magic's Creator/Notator package, for example, does), or which allows you to play two or more sequences back at once (with different loop lengths, of course). A little ingenuity will be amply rewarded! Have fun looping, and make sure you leave those gaps!

EXAMPLES

The accompanying diagrams give some examples of the simpler combinations of loop lengths and the results they produce. As with all such techniques, a little experimentation goes a long way.

As you can see from Figure 1, simple loop length ratios like 1:2 produce simple results; more unusual ratios like 3:7 will give much more interesting results. Extending the idea with more than one phrase inside a loop opens up lots more possibilities (see Figure 2).